


Bright Star

by penscritch



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Le Petit Prince | The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, I can't believe I turned a kid's story into a mature one, I don't know what I'm doing, M/M, SPACESHIPS AND INTERGALACTIC/UNIVERSE ADVENTURES, THE LITTLE PRINCE AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penscritch/pseuds/penscritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The book of love is long and boring<br/>And written very long ago<br/>It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes<br/>And things we're all too young to know." </p><p>In which Steve Rogers embarks on the voyage of a lifetime.</p><p>*Currently going through the most massive rehaul since somebody first dragged a whale somewhere. Will probably start getting updated in summer. Probably. Either way, THIS WILL BE FINISHED. EVEN IF I HAVE TO SET MY BLOOD ON FIRE.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: The Rose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own The Avengers or any characters in The Avengers, though it would be seriously rad if I did. I credit the idea of a Le Petit Prince AU with this anonymous person on kink meme: 
> 
> http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/5758.html?thread=6511230#t6511230
> 
> Whoever you are, your plot-bunny has eaten all my carrots and is currently eating my brain.

Once, there was a boy. He was beautiful and flashy and lived like a racecar. You couldn’t see anything of him but speed and impossibly sleek lines. However, as is often the case with racecars, he was unique. That also meant that past the brilliantly impenetrable framework, he was alone. There is no comfort in being unique, when you are the only one of your kind.  

He spent years putting on the grandest show anyone could see; my, could Tony Stark party! He schmoozed with the highest of the high and the lowest of the high, no further below, thank you. Here, take a glass of champagne; don’t be such a downer, will ya? And off he saunters, somewhat unevenly but admittedly graceful for all of that.

He was so brilliant, they say, he built a spaceship.

“I want to be a second Wright brothers. No, scratch that, I’ll be awesomer! I’m making the first environmentally-friendly spaceship that _works_. Hah, take that George Lucas!”

And so he did.

No one heard from him again, the mad fool. But oh, he had _style_ , didn’t he?


	2. The Agent, and a Traveller From a Distant Land

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In return for the uber-shortness that was the Prologue, here’s the official Chapter 1, following right on the heels of it. For anyone who was driven crazy by the literary reference, it was from the poem “Bright Star” by John Keats. The lovely first line of this love poem: “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art…"

There was something to be said for efficiency.

Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD took a cursory survey of the room, of the handiwork. He frowned slightly, and it was a frown that contained multitudes; the disappointment of a father, the eclipse of the sun, the vengeance of all the angels in heaven. The junior agents in the room saw that benighted look, locked their knees to keep from trembling, and prayed Jesus that no more murder would be done today, thank you.

“Agent Brock.”

A white-faced agent stumbled forward. “Y-Yes, sir?” Unconsciously, he began twisting his hands in his suit.

“Where is the target.” His words were quiet, calm, and spread through the room the way a drop of ink stains water: thoroughly. It was not a question.

“W-Well…” Agent Brock looked ready to cry. “He.. he threw Agent Ray against our sniper, sir. His followers broke loose and started shooting. And he grabbed a machine gun and started… shooting everyone? He got away around then, we think.” His eyes were suspiciously watery, though his voice evened out as he spoke.

Coulson let out a measured breath, and the room shuddered. “Agent Tanner, give me a report on what you managed to salvage. Agent Carter, you’re on clean-up duty. Agent Brock,” he turned back to Brock, “report your team to Director Fury. Tell him I’m taking care of the case now, and I’ve assigned all of you to Training Level 9.”

At his final assignment, faces turned positively corpse-pale – Training Level 5 was enough to leave agents in medical for a month or more. But Training Level 9? One of the legends of SHIELD involved Training Level 10 – a swanky, accomplished Brit named James Bond from MI6 thought he’d give it a try once.  He came out a pile of meat. Thoroughly dead meat. Not even _freshly_ dead after the five minutes he walked in. MI6’s still demanding damages for what happened to their finest agent.

Satisfied with the imminent near-deaths of the young agents, Coulson left the room, leaving ghosts in his wake. It didn’t do much for his temper, considering how much incompetence he had to clean up today, let alone on a daily basis, but it did make him feel a little better. He was practicing Darwinism at its best.

That night, he sat next to a flatulent man in economy class because they made a mistake with his ticket for business class on a fully-booked delayed flight to the Middle of Nowhere, USA.

‘ _This is not a good week_ ,’ Coulson thought, but girded himself for war anyway.

If he had known how much of an understatement that would turn out to be, he would have shot himself in the head and gotten it over with.

 

Three days and several canteens of water later, Coulson was stranded in the middle of a desert chasing after the man in black. 

He barely stopped to sleep, and ate as he pursued him. He left behind his vehicle miles ago, as it was too visible on the flat terrain. Coulson was tired, and deeply unhappy. Sand had wormed its way insidiously into places it had no business being in. He was following a cold trail, and _he wasn’t going to give up, dammit_. Only novices gave up.

He paused for a breather, taking the opportunity to survey the landscape around him more. Unusual rock formations, copious amounts of dust and sand, a few hard-bitten cacti, interspersed with the rare tumbleweed or scraggly bush. Nothing of note.

Except he noticed a muted flash slightly behind, like fool’s gold.

 _Got you_.

.0.

Was that a _tower_? Coulson blinked. It positively burst with pointy metal protrusions and blue-purple lights. He had never seen a communications tower with such an amalgam of archaic and advanced technological design, but he’d deal with it. Strange things were produced when SHIELD scientists congregated in the mess hall on Mondays after the deadlines for projects, fingers still pumping out creations by rote muscle-memory.

He certainly hadn’t expected this when he carefully slipped into the heavily camouflaged facilities. He’d expected to find the man in black and munitions certainly, but nothing of this sheer _scale_.

Each tent erected to house the munitions was large enough to be a sizeable warehouse. Inside, packed like sardines were several boxes and cloth-covered objects. Coulson had a sinking feeling that he knew what they were.

He carefully opened a few of the boxes, revealing what could only be guns, despite their unusual shape. Ammunition. Bombs, and some contained what looked like mines. He lifted a cloth covering one of the bulkier objects in the tent. An alien motorcycle? Before he could move to replace the cloth, a voice spoke from the entrance of the tent.

“So you were my pursuer.” He clapped his hands slowly, appreciation in his voice. “Bravo, bravo.”

Coulson spun around, reached for his gun only to find his arms seized by the ugliest henchmen he’d ever seen, in tacky metal armor. How the _fuck_ had they come up behind him without him noticing?

He gave one last objecting twitch before he looked in the direction of the speaker. As the man walked forward into sight, Coulson had to work to keep his mouth from falling open.

A Darth Maul cosplayer?

A _damned_ cosplayer?

‘ _What the **fuck**_ **,** ’ thought Coulson furiously. ‘ _I am **not** paid enough for this shit_.’

The man (goddamned _cosplayer_ ) obviously took his stunned silence for the positive kind, and chuckled. “Don’t feel too bad; I assure you that the Chitauri have caught better men than you unaware. Shall we have a talk outside?”

Dragged by his beefy henchmen, Coulson could only allow himself to be taken out of the tent.

 

“Ah, much better.” The cosplayer gave him an indulgent smile as he appraised him with sharp eyes, surrounded by a few Chitauri guards. From the size of the camp, Coulson deduced that the other Chitauri must have been assigned elsewhere for more important operations, while the few here guarded the base. Unfortunately, this meant that this select group must be some of the more elite soldiers.

“I assumed my tracks were covered thoroughly, but I should have known that you’d surpass that obstacle. The estimable Agent Coulson of SHIELD, I presume?”

Though he phrased it as a question, his tone made it a statement of fact. Coulson refused to answer and gave him only a blank stare. He did not want to know how a cosplayer managed to get his hands on such a large store of munitions, and information that should have been safely locked in SHIELD databases.

“Come now, Agent, I expected more civility,” purred the man.

“You haven’t introduced yourself,” Coulson said bluntly. He began calculating means of escape, and found that he had an excellent start. The henchmen had only bothered to restrain his upper arms with their frankly enormous hands. His wrists and hands were free, and he casually shifted them behind his back, where he had concealed a small knife and an automatic.

“Ah-ah.” He wagged his finger in dissent. “What kind of leader would I be if I revealed my identity so easily?”

“A kind one,” deadpanned Coulson.

The man chortled. “A sense of humor! Truly a surprise, Agent Coulson!”

Coulson permitted a small smile, and waited for his laughter to die away. “I would truly appreciate it if you released me.”

He laughed again, wiped his eyes theatrically. “Alas, you’ve seen my weapons. I’m afraid I can’t let you go that easily.” He grinned a macabre death’s head rictus. “Take him away, lads.”

Coulson took his opportunity with admirable speed. In the moment the henchmen moved to obey, changing their grips slightly, he twisted his arm enough to slit the tendons of one beefy henchman’s wrist. He roared in pain, and lunged with surprising speed. One arm free, Coulson shifted the other surprised henchman into its path and observed with grim satisfaction as one gutted the other, releasing his other arm. He quickly threw the knife into the eye of the remaining henchman, and launched himself toward the man in black before the other Chitauri guards could react.

The leader narrowed his eyes in furious surprise, but quickly unsheathed his saber, releasing a flurry of attacks that Coulson barely dodged. Coulson needed a bit of distance to properly aim his gun, and shifted slightly to the side, offering a calculated opening. To his satisfaction, the other man took it without hesitation. He dodged the incoming sideswipe and devious counter sideswipe, and stepped back to level his gun.

Coulson’s vision swerved suddenly. In the preternatural clarity granted to those with time enough to ponder their own existence before swift and certain death, he processed that yes, he’d stepped in a _pothole_ of all things. He did not _~~trip~~_. He hadn’t ~~tripped since he hit puberty~~.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Coulson thought viciously.

The blade swung down.

 

What happened next was not clear, even in Coulson’s remarkably ordered mind. He registered a strangely colored blur whizz across his vision, embedding itself in the chest of his attacker with a sickly squelch. _Arrows_ were sprouting from the chests of various henchmen, and others were swiftly dispatched by a woman who disappeared and appeared with disquieting ease only to stab people and a Scandinavian man dressed in antique armor. Wielding a _hammer_. In the periphery, he noted a large green man-shaped creature gleefully tearing into the munitions.

It all ended in a matter of minutes.

 

Still on the ground and trying to marshal his thoughts, Coulson watched as the frighteningly proficient woman pulled a dagger out of one of the Chitauri and frowned. As she tilted the blade, he could see that the edge was ruined.

“Chitauri,” she said, her voice full of disapproval.

“Lady Widow,” a voice boomed, “Do not be disappointed, for we have fought a true battle today! It is worth the loss of a fine weapon to kill a mighty foe!” The speech came from the man with the hammer.

“An underling is not a mighty foe, Thor.”

“Uh, guys? Could someone hand me a pair of pants? I seem to have lost mine again.” A naked man near the munitions was trying to cover himself with his hands. He bore a disconcerting resemblance to the angry green creature from before.

“Bruce, catch.” A blond man slightly shorter than the one with the hammer tossed a pair of pants to him.

“Thanks,” he said gratefully, and pulled them on.

A dark-haired man with a bow (so _that’s_ where the arrows came from, noted Coulson distantly) swung down from a metal post. He whistled lowly. “Nice throw, Cap. You nailed Red Skull with one hit.”

The blond man walked over in front of Coulson and yanked a colorful round metal disc (a _shield_?) out of the corpse. He sighed. “I wish I’d gotten to him sooner. So many lives were lost at his hand.”

Dazedly, Phil wondered if the “Red Skull” they were talking about was the dead psychopathic cosplayer. He probably was, but everything in his world needed reaffirming right now, after what he’d seen.

He must have made a sound, because they looked over at him and the blond man walked over. “Sorry about that, it must have been an awful shock. Here.” The blond man held out his hand, and pulled Coulson to his feet.

“Who are you?” asked Coulson. He looked around at the others as they gathered behind the blond man: the woman, the man with the bow, the even taller blond man who had wielded a hammer, and the man who was previously naked and even more previously a green rage monster.

“My name is Steve Rogers,” said the man. And he smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, anybody able to name the literary reference in this chapter? It’s from a much more modern literary work this time. And if you’re befuddled by Red Skull, he’s supposed to be the archenemy for Captain America in comic-verse (dunno if he’s showed up in the movies). Originally he’s a sociopathic Nazi enthusiast of sorts, but I changed him into the Chitauri chief for this fic.
> 
> As for Coulson fans, I swear that Coulson normally doesn’t curse this much; it’s all the crazy he’s been dropped in and his enormously terrible very bad week. This Coulson also hasn’t been tempered by the crazy that only aliens or Clint or Tony can cause. Coulson was lucky enough to be the first witness to his planet’s first hostile alien invasion.
> 
> Also, I will be taking the liberty of changing Steve’s uniform, because spandex is not my thing, though the shield will stay the same. I will happily take any suggestions for what his new outfit should be like. Pants? Film noire detective coat? Gimmee your ideas. Anything but the Nomad outfit, because as one person noted, that’s __~~practically a porn star~~ spandex outfit. :D


End file.
